Novak Fabricates ‘Confusion’ Over Wilson’s CIA Status

In a column today titled “‘Covert’ Confusion at the CIA,” Robert Novak continues his efforts to distort the facts about Valerie Plame Wilson’s status with the CIA.

Novak first recounts the events at a hearing last month, when House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) stated that CIA Director Michael Hayden had authorized him to state that “Wilson was covert.”

Novak writes that during a recent Washington dinner, Hayden approached him and several others and “indicated” that “he had not authorized [Waxman] to say Mrs. Wilson had been a ‘covert’ CIA employee, as Waxman claimed, but only that she was ‘undercover.’” Yet, 10 days after the dinner, Novak writes, Hayden seemingly switched positions again and “asserted to me that the wife of Bush critic Joseph Wilson indeed had been ‘covert.’”

This may sound confusing, but it isn’t. As Novak himself explains, Hayden first told Waxman that Wilson was an “undercover agent.” Later, before the hearing, a CIA lawyer clarified with Waxman that Wilson was undercover, covert, and that her CIA status was classified. The CIA approved the following statements before the hearing:

During her employment at the CIA, Ms. Wilson was under cover.

Her employment status with the CIA was classified information prohibited from disclosure under Executive Order 12958.

At the time of the publication of Robert Novak’s column on July 14,2003, Ms. Wilson’s CIA employment status was covert.

This was classified information.

There is no “confusion” here, despite Novak’s best efforts to create it. Hayden hasn’t switched positions, nor has he ever said that Wilson was not covert. Hayden tells Novak he is “completely comfortable” with the CIA lawyer’s clarification.

Novak is simply trying to muddy the fact that he and his cohorts — Victoria Toensing, the Washington Post editorial board, Brit Hume, and others — got the facts about Wilson’s CIA status dead wrong.